Just In the Nic-O’-Tine: E‐​Cigarettes Get a Reprieve

Here’s some genuine good news for both individual liberty and harm reduction: the Food and Drug Administration has granted a four‐​year reprieve to e‐​cigarettes (“vaping”). In particular, it is extending from November 2018 to August 2022 the requirement to obtain regulatory clearance for, or else withdraw, vaping products now on the market. As I noted last year, under the “deeming” regulations proposed under the Obama administration

even products currently sold on the market will have to be withdrawn unless their makers, mostly small companies, care to venture on an FDA approval process that can cost $1 million and up per item. Any resulting applications will result in permission to sell only if the agency decides the product is a net safety improvement on current offerings. And that permission will be at best chancy because the FDA, following [then‐​CDC head Thomas] Frieden’s lead but in contrast with the views of many others in the public health field, refuses to acknowledge vaping as a safer alternative to tobacco smoking, even though large numbers of smokers turn to vaping with exactly that goal in mind.

While it is likely that many smokers save their life or health by switching from a cigarette habit to the less injurious electronic alternative, every such switch cuts into revenues from conventional cigarette sales—and thus the coffers of state governments and other beneficiaries of the 1998 tobacco settlement. Some of these groups, as well as some components of the tobacco business, had quietly backed the FDA’s plan to close down vaping except perhaps for the very biggest players.

A spokesman for the White House told The Daily Caller News Foundation President Donald Trump “supports the FDA’s new initiative,” and noted it as an example of his administration’s efforts to give relief to small businesses across the country.

“Public health is a priority and anything that will help protect kids and assist individuals to stop smoking is a worthy cause,” the White House spokesman told TheDCNF. “The President and his administration have taken historic action to eliminate unnecessary and burdensome regulations.”

Meanwhile, new Food and Drug Administration head Scott Gottlieb says his agency will look into the possibility of limiting nicotine levels in conventional cigarettes with the aim of making them less addictive. The obvious problem with that, the incursion on liberty aside, is that if cigarettes are made to contain less nicotine, many users will choose to maintain an existing level of intake by stepping up the number of cigarettes they smoke per day, thus boosting their intake of associated tar and noxious gases. But at least there’s time to argue over the flaws of a proposal that’s down the road. The vaping regs were bearing down quickly.